


the skin you call your home

by silverlining99



Category: Almost Human
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:10:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlining99/pseuds/silverlining99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It may all blow up in his face later — what <i>doesn’t</i>, these days — but for now he needs this. Her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the skin you call your home

**Author's Note:**

> Post-"Skin." Title from Rilo Kiley's "Accidental Death."

John’s not entirely sure how they wound up here together, circling around an inevitability he’s been trying to avoid. It’s been a hell of a week, yeah, chasing down worthless leads on a suspected InSyndicate tech cache and dealing with Dorian in fine form on top of it all, but excuses only take him so far and finding himself in his bed like this is a few steps farther still.

He may have spent the last seven months figuring out how to warp his sense of reality into something tolerable, but even he can’t twist this into acceptability.

“This — we shouldn’t,” he finally tries. She’s light as a feather straddling his lap, and the sharp cut of her collarbone fits nicely under his lips. “This is really — really — this is a bad idea.”

“I already told you,” she murmurs, lips and breath moving along his jaw, “we don’t — “

He kisses her quiet. He’s heard it all before, doesn’t need to hear it again. She drapes her arms over his shoulders and melts into it, the feel of her mouth shockingly right against his, and he slides his own arms around and up her back to clutch her close. His mind has been drumming up fantasies since the day he first laid eyes on Stahl, and now — now with her here to flesh them out, as exquisitely small held against him as anything his imagination ever conjured up — he admits to himself at last that he can’t help but do something about it.

He has to. It may all blow up in his face later — what _doesn’t_ , these days — but for now he needs this. Her. Some small sliver of time to pretend: that things can be normal again, that he can have at least a fraction of what he wants despite the ruin of his life and his body.

The ruin the last woman he let close _made_ of him.

So maybe he even deserves it. There’s only so much one man should be expected to bear, John thinks. He came back and he’s trying, _christ_ how he’s trying, but there’s never any end to Dorian’s pushing and prodding, and Stahl is there in his face every fucking day, and he just _can’t_ anymore.

“Never mind,” he mutters. He skims his hands down her waist and hips, pats her ass. “I’m fine. Go ahead, don't stop on my account.”

Her smile curls palpably against his cheek. She’s pleased with him, he supposes; it feels good to have accomplished that. Her hips shift back and she’s deft and precise in opening his pants, gives him tantalizing pressure as she eases his zipper down. “Okay?” she checks.

As if he's a scared child, or a horse about to spook. She is perceptive, he'll give her that. “Yeah,” he confirms. He swallows hard and lifts up to help her tug fabric out from beneath him. “Just peachy.”

It's a lie, but one she lets him have. He's not sure why her crawling back and dragging his pants down makes his heart speed up and his mouth go chalky dry; it's not like she’ll think less of him for it. He knows better than to think _that_ of her. Still, though, for all that his bastardization of a limb is no secret, he's kept the sight of it confined to himself and his doctors.

Until now. Inch by inch she exposes him: the scant remains of true flesh, then the grafted-in socket, then the entire amalgamated length of his so-called leg. She flicks her gaze up to his face for a moment, eyes dark and warmly calculating, but when he doesn’t acknowledge it overtly neither does she. There’s no difference in the weight or care of her touch on either side as her hands skim up each calf, over both knees and along his thighs as she crawls up and settles back onto his lap.

“Now for the easy part,” she murmurs with a quick wink. She works the buttons of his shirt without hurry, her head bowed and her fingers creeping down his chest in slow, steady brushes. Locks of hair slip over her shoulders and hang in loose waves; he’s grateful for the relief of being able to focus on that, on the small details that make her so right, so exactly what he needs.

Her hands smooth the panels of his shirt aside and sweep up his shoulders, his neck, to pluck teasingly at his earlobes with her fingertips. He finds himself caught in her doe-eyed gaze and her sweetly knowing smile. “Have you decided?” she asks. “What you want to —”

“Valerie,” he forces out, hoarse, strained. His heart pounds in his chest and he scrapes his fingers through her hair just to stop their trembling as he commits himself once and for all.

As he imagines her on her knees and decides he’ll have her like that. Everything will be perfect, he thinks. _She’ll_ be perfect.

Or close enough, at any rate. John closes his eyes and kisses her and pretends there’s not an emptiness beneath the perfumed lotion layered over not-quite skin.

He pretends, because that’s what she was made for him to do.

“I wanna call you Valerie.”


End file.
